IMMEDIA has been organized & coordinated by Entity, the Ann Arbor Computer Artists' Coalition. The group wishes to thank the following sponsors for thier generous support: University of Michigan Office of Instructional Technology & Media Union, University of Michigan School of Art & Design, YoHA, Apple, NIQ, and Enlighten.

EVENTS: SATURDAY FEBRUARY 7
10:00am - 4:00pm LECTURES & PRESENTATIONS
Media Union Design Lab 1 & Teleconference Room
7 - 10pm RECEPTION & PERFORMANCES
Media Union Gallery

Realtime 3D Rendering Using SGIÕs & VRML2
Ross Barna
10am - 4pm / in front of Design Lab 1
You have probably heard of cybersex, military flight simulators and Lawnmower man-- but how do you use the power and versatility afforded by the new standard in Virtual Reality? VRML 2.0 gives us the power to integrate, in real time, on computers that don't cost too much all of the mediums you can think up. Spatialized audio, animated and dynamic textures, real-world i/o, distributed shared environments anything you can think of is supported or you can hack up!
Ross Barna will be demonstrating a piece that combines multi-track spatilized audio in conjunction with animated textures generated from the raw sound data. This demo will run on a Silicon Graphics O2 workstation.

Mastodons, Dinosaurs, Ice Ages:
Redesigning the Cranbrook Institute of Science
Mark Nelson, Nicole Cadoret, Jared Forbes, Taera Crane
10:00 / Design Lab 1
The expansion and renovation of the Cranbrook Institute of Science is a four year, $6.5 million dollar project that will provide new exhibits, related programs and improved visitor amenities to one of MichiganÕs most important educational and cultural resources. Using the traditions of natural history museums and the interactive methods of science centers, the Institute is creating exhibits which present cutting-edge science in new and accessible ways. An office of more than twenty people was created to realize this project, including collaborators from many diverse disciplines. Architects, scientists, educators, developers, new media designers, 3-dimensional designers and graphic designers are working to open the museum in September 1998.
New Media Designers Taera Crane and Jared Forbes, and Graphic Designers Mark Nelson and Nicole Cadoret will present a brief overview of the museum and itÕs renovation, as well as their works in progress for the Cranbrook Institute of Science.

Digital Video & Installation Works
Yau Ching
10:00 / Teleconference Room
Yau Ching will give a presentation about her digital video and installation work, followed by Q and A. Yau teaches at the University of Michigan Ôs Film/Video Department.

The Algorithmic Stream
Maurice Methot
11:00 / Design Lab 1
Southern Illinois University professor Maurice Methot will present The Algorithmic Stream, a live webcast of algorithmically generated computer music using non-linear equations and mathematical feedback systems to generate MIDI information which is continuously encoded in realtime into RealAudio format and made available internationally at http://stream.mcma-east.siu.edu

Poetica Vaginal and Transanimation in pSK-M13+
Joe Davis
11:00 / Teleconference Room
Joe Davis, MIT Department of Biology Research Affiliate, will give an overview of the evolution of his work in art and molecular biology. He will trace connections between the search for both visible and invisible naturalism in the arts and present documentation about how this intellectual legacy relates to projects in the search for extraterrestrial life (attempts to animate the cosmos) and interpretations of the underlying mathematics, information density, and robustness of biological and electronic media.
See: http://www.omnimag.com/archives/features/norton_rings/index.html

The Internet as a Broadcast Medium for Pornography,
The Pam and Tommy Lee tapes take it mainstream
Charles LoVerme
12:00 / Design Lab 1
This lecture will discuss various methods of distribution of XXX material on the Web, its influence on culture and art and the emergence of technosexual and new XXX media. Talk will focus on the Pam and Tommy tapes, and how the former Bay Watch star is using the Internet to bring hard-core mainstream. Charles LoVerme is an Assistant Professor of Intermedia at Western Michigan University.
See: http://cosmos.art.wmich.edu/~xxx

Manipulated Art History
Norwood Viviano 12:00 / Teleconference Room
Norwood Viviano, Cranbrook Academy of Art MFA Candidate, will discuss artists who have turned assimilated or borrowed visual language into critique. Starting with examples from contemporary art history Viviano will then talk about how other artists work in relation to his own computer work. Norwood has a piece currently on exhibit in the Media Union Gallery.

Electron Cloud
Eleanor Cupp
12:40 / Teleconference Room
ÒElectron Cloud,Ó a 4 minute sequenced audio piece (which is on exhibit at the Media Union Gallery) , is an aural representation of the Bohr model of the atom. It is also a rumination on unseen beauty that surrounds us and the intersection between science, art and faith. Eleanor Cupp, MFA candidate at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, will discuss and answer questions about her work.

Pragmatic Approaches to Real-World Interactivity
Michael Rodemer
1:00 / Design Lab 1
The most common interfaces to computers, the keyboard and mouse, are increasingly being joined by non-standard interfaces - things like coffee cups, trash cans, musical instruments, doors and drawers. Using electronic sensing and interfacing technology, it is possible to link the computer to the physical world, providing new aesthetic dimensions to artworks employing computer-based media, such as sound, video, text, images. In the workshop, participants will be given an overview of the possibilities for interfacing computers to the physical world, followed by a series of demonstrations of specific techniques. Michael is an Assistant Professor in the department of New Genres at University of MichiganÕs School of Art & Design.

The Prayer of Thanksgiving
Melanie Printup Hope
1:00 / Teleconference Room
This presentation will include an introduction to Melanie Printup HopeÕs work, the viewing a small portion of her Web site, and a complete tour of her interactive CD-ROM. The Prayer of Thanksgiving is the backbone of Iroquois culture and gives thanks and shows respect towards all the natural world elements that surround us. Melanie combines interactive digital technology with traditional beadwork to share Native culture. She reaches a large and broad audience by using many contemporary and technological formats to exhibit her work. Melanie is an Assistan Professor of Graphic Design at the Sage Colleges in Albany.
Melanie is an assistant Professor of Graphic Design at the Sage Colleges in Albany, NY

Exhibiting Your Portfolio on the Web
Heather Bradley & Chassy Cleland
2:00 / Design Lab 1
Topics to be covered include: reasons for promoting your work online, design and usability considerations, the basics for maximizing image quality, image capturing techniques, file compression, and content suggestions. Examples of artist's portfolio's will be shown. Artists who have a basic understanding of website design and/or who are currently working on a website portfolio are especially encouraged to attend this presentation. All others are welcomed as well.
The presentors are Heather Bradley, a designer at Fry Multimedia in Ann Arbor, and Chassy Cleland, formally a designer at Reed Publications in London.
see: www.frymulti.com www.umich.edu/~ego

Humanistic Intelligence: Theoretical Issues
Steve Mann
2:00 / Teleconference Room
WearComp (wearable computing/personal imaging) as described in http://wearcomp.org is presented as a framework for the individual to achieve self-determination and mastery over his/her own destiny. Humanistic Intelligence challenges the notion of humans and machines as separate entities, while at the same time respecting the value of human dignity and respect. Humanistic Intelligence challenges also the notion of environmental intelligence-gathering devices --- instead of intelligent highways, smart-floors, smart rooms, smart toilets, smart lightswitches, etc... HI suggests the possibility of "smart people" --- people equipped with computational hardware functioning as true extensions of their minds and bodies. Steve Mann is a Professor at the University of Toronto.
see: http://wearcomp.org/lvac/index.html
http://hi.eecg.toronto.edu/art.html
http://wearcam.org/wyckoff.html

Scanning the Milleneal Aesthetic
Timothy Allen Jackson
3:00 / Design Lab 1
New media technologies are defining a new ontology for the role of the arts and the artist in the next century. These revolutionary changes are also due to a concurrent social revolution due to the globalization of postmodern culture(s). These events are calling for a reinvention of aesthetics as a mode of cultural discourse which differs dramatically from our conventional notions. Over the last few centuries, the term aesthetics has been reduced to a discourse focussing on the critique of dominant conceptions regarding taste and beauty in the arts. This context for inquiry has limited aesthetic discourse in tremendous ways and has led to the demoralization of an incredibly important field of study. Such a limited conception of the field of aesthetics simplifies the complex role that our senses play in the formation of our individual and collective identities. Although aesthetics speaks to the nature of the arts, aesthetics speaks of many other things as well, and indeed at times becomes the very means of speaking the ethical and political. The field of contemporary aesthetics is enjoying a revival of interest in light of contemporary discourses in art theory, cultural studies, and critical theory (among other areas of inquiry). This is happening at a time whenever the foundations of classical and modern aesthetics are giving way to these new theoretical movements for better or worse. Given this revival of interest in aesthetics and its critique, it is important to consider and reconsider the past functions of aesthetics, to articulate contemporary issues and positions, and to ponder the future role of a radically new aesthetics in a world in which the senses are manipulated by new technologies in ways which were heretofore impossible. And most importantly, to destroy the linkage between the totalizing notions of taste and beauty which serve particular dominant ideologies and populations and to be wary for similar power relations at work in these new media. Tim Jackson, New Media Coordinator at Penn Stste, will discuss these ideas in light of some specific art works incorporating emergent technologies along some key areas of interest. An open discussion will follow.
see: http://cac.psu.edu/~taj2/

Telepresence & Telematic Works
Eduardo Kac
3:00 / Teleconference Room
A new aesthetic is emerging as a result of the synergy of non-formal elements, such as coexistence in virtual and real spaces, synchronicity of actions, real-time remote control, operation of telerobots, collaboration through networks, and interactions among humans, animals, plants, and machines. The focus of this presentation is the work Eduardo Kac has been developing since 1985 with telematic and telepresence media, both in traditional galleries and on the telephone network and the Internet. He will describe these works and discuss some of their cultural implications. The aesthetic of hybridization he pursues merges immediate perceptual phenomena with a heightened awareness of what affects us but is visually absent, physically remote.
These telepresence and telematic works propose alternatives to the unidirectional system of art, creating dialogic situations that give precedence to the participant's role in the experience of the work.

RECEPTION 7 - 10pm

Community Programming
Mark LeBay
7 - 10pm / in front of Design Lab 1
Participant character, playfulness and competitiveness drive the mechanics and shape the nature of this interactive experiment in social sculpture. Guided by an explicit social code, enter and maneuver within this micro-culture in search of self-satisfaction.

MAINTENANCE/WEB: What Went Wrong
Kevin McCoy, Jennifer McCoy, Torsten Burns
7:30 / Teleconference Room
MAINTENANCE/WEB is an art web site (http://www.thing.net/~m) that explores the underside of technology; the routine, laborious, and tedious aspects that make it such a lasting entity in our time. MAINTENANCE/WEB undertakes this in the context of a "space opera" that examines life on the fictitious space craft "Greenfields". Using logs from space workers, hidden surveillance cameras, environmental microphones, and profiles of on-board tools and hardware, the project creates a disjointed, high density profile of life on the ship. During the exhibition, the "crew" performs daily in the sense of uploading new material and responding to requests posted by visitors to the site with the goal of creating a remote, yet quasi-familiar parallel world.
see: http://www.thing.net/~m/proposal.pdf

Over Water, Over Stone
Svjetlana Nichols-Bukvic, Rick Nichols, Tim Norris
8:00 / Design Lab 1
Over Water, Over Stone, a 10-minute electro-acoustic music performance with narration, is a dialogue between male and female within oneself. It is about the truth of the voice, loneliness and the beauty of the journey of discovery. Over Water, Over Stone was partially funded by the Revolving Museum, Boston, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

The Color Red
Maurice Methot
8:15 / Design Lab 1
The Color Red is a 15 minute musical/visual improvisation using the color spectrum as an organizational principle. Using an original program written in the MAX programming environment, the performer is able to remap the fretboard of an inexpensive Suzuki MIDI guitar controller to various scales, modes, and ragas. The guitar's control keypad becomes a "control center" allowing the performer to store and retrieve, on the fly, musical passages and gestures of any length, to layer additional musical gestures, and to control various sound and MIDI algorithms. The sound sources are sampled data and an Emu Ultra-Proteus sound module. Finally, the player's gestures are also mapped to various locations within a digital video file, allowing the performer edit in realtime visual full motion digital video. The video segments are divided into five movements based on color spectrum, but the actual ordering of visual events is determined in realtime by the performer. The performance takes place entirely in realtime, in an improvisational mode that allows for momentary changes in mood both is sonic and visual elements. Nothing is prerecorded.

Multiple Dwelling
Jeff Gompertz
8:30 - 9:30 / Video Studio
This interactive installation project involves the intersection of an elaborately constructed physical environment with a digitally generated (VRML) one. The main setting or PROP for the installation will be a scene "sampled" from the movie COMA, in which some 50 bodies hang dramatically suspended in a state of perpetual coma, Involuntary donors of their own organs.
The navigable multi-user 3D environment will be built to mirror this "Prop". The artificial space will contain triggering & linkage elements tied in to the physically constructed one & allow for on-site as well as remote audience participation.
see: http://www.fakeshop.com/home/dwelling/comaframe.html